Gamut, the advanced advertising company acquired by Apollo Global Management when it bought Cox Media Group, said it will use iSpot.tv to measure TV ad campaigns.
Gamut said it will use iSpot's cross-platform TV data, which unifies both traditional and over-the top viewing, to document the incremental reach of the local OTT campaigns Gamut sells.
As OTT and connected TV usage has increased during the pandemic, advertisers have been looking to reach streaming viewers, but have been demanding better measurement of campaigns, including data about whether streaming ads are reaching viewers who have cut the cord or aren't watching traditional TV.
With iSpot, Gamut can target and reach qualified local OTT audiences, which generate website visits, foot traffic, brand lift and co-viewing at scale for clients.
"Marketers today have many options with regards to how they spend their ad dollars. As OTT continues to grow at an incredible pace, we are now able to provide our advertisers with the data that they need to measure the true incremental reach of their OTT campaigns,” said Soo Jin Oh, co-COO at Gamut.
Gamut started selling local OTT campaigns three years ago when few were in the field. It created Gamut Total by making deals with premium video providers that give it priority access to inventory not typically available to programmatic buyers.
Though Gamut is related to Cox Media Group, it sells local campaigns in all 210 markets, not just those where CMG owns stations.
Oh said the iSpot data will help Gamut distinguish itself from other OTT companies.
“We chose iSpot because we play in the local space and a lot of competing solutions using ACR technology were built for national. A lot of them don’t have the scale to do small markets,” she said.
“Unified measurement in and of itself is super innovative,” said Stuart Schwartzapfel, senior VP, media partnerships at iSpot.TV. “We’re doing this at great scale and we’re doing it in a very precise manner that meets the needs of Gamut’s regional and local advertisers.”
Having better data will help marketers decide how much money they ought to be spending on OTT. It will also help track and reduce the frequency with which viewers see some individual ads, improving the consumer experience.
“Data is only powerful if it’s actionable,” Oh added. With some data companies, a report costs five figures and isn’t delivered until after a campaign has run. “When you’re working with iSpot, it’s real time,” she said. The data is part of the Gamut dashboard as value added.
The local OTT is also a good fit for political advertisers and this is going to be a record setting year for campaign spending. “Political is a big business. We’re fortunate to be seeing that right now,” said Oh.
Gamut is integrating the iSpot data into its tech stack and the dashboard clients use to monitor tier campaigns. “We’re already integrated with MediaOcean, Strata, HudsonMX. Prisma is coming up soon,” she said, ticking off the major buying platforms.
“We want to make buying Gamut a very easy process,” Oh said. “That’s the key when you’re playing in the local space, which can be cumbersome."
Gamut also wants to add more outcome data to its platform.
Finally it wants to take the data it has already accumulated and make it ready to be used by artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict consumer behavior.
